


A Sky on Fire

by DarylDixonGrimes



Series: Desus Holiday Bingo '17 [5]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Desus Holiday Bingo, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 01:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: It's New Year's Eve again. Paul reflects on all the times he and Daryl have watched the fireworks together.





	A Sky on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> For the "fireworks" square. Also, bingo I guess.

They can see the fireworks from their backyard.

Loud booms fill the night, and the sky above crackles with colors that turn the lawn different shades of pink, blue, and green. Lounging below, with their breaths visible in the air above them, they watch the darkness explode into sparks, some large and spreading, others chasing each other or falling in showers like the branches of a willow tree set ablaze. Spidery smoke drifts in the wind, the shadowy echoes of the vibrant display quietly dissipating into the atmosphere. 

Daryl has always loved the fireworks. Paul can remember the first time, a Fourth of July. It had been Paul’s house then, just his and not theirs. He remembers the smell of funnel cake drifting over from the fairgrounds. He remembers that Daryl’s mouth had tasted like beer and apples.

The same blanket, fingertips brushing between them, Paul turning to watch the sparks reflect in Daryl’s eyes.

It was the first of many nights like this one. Every Independence Day, every New Year’s, the rare special occasion like that time the local high school football team won the state title. Every time, they would drag the blanket out and watch. At some point Daryl’s quiet enjoyment turned into actual words, and Paul could measure the way Daryl opened up to him in the beginning of their relationship by fireworks alone.

“Nice" had been the first word spoken during their now-sacred ritual. 

A New Year’s Eve two years ago. That was Paul’s first inkling that he was breaking down walls, or that he was at least allowed to walk up to a window and peer inside. 

By their second Fourth, Daryl was gracing him with full sentences during the display. Elsewhere in their lives, he'd sometimes bordered on verbose. 

“You see that shit?” Daryl had asked, his finger extended toward the sky, waves of red and gold cascading over his skin. Paul had known right then, that he was fully entangled, that there was no pulling back or shying away from the thing that had grown up between them, not without irreversibly damaging parts of them both. 

He remembers rolling over then. He remembers chapped lips and moans and whispered names woven between the resounding booms reverberating for miles around. He remembers the way Daryl’s face had changed colors below him. Gold, blue, red, gold, green. He remembers the sparks reflecting in his eyes.

Daryl had moved in before Labor Day that year. Last year.

Another New Year’s followed. Another Fourth. A local firefighter celebrating 50 years on the force.

Kisses stolen between bombs bursting. Midnight professions of eternity. Half-joked promises that they would celebrate their own 50 years with a fireworks display. Hopes that maybe that night, somewhere else in town, two other people might make love under manufactured stars.

It’s New Year’s Eve again and there are sparks in Daryl’s hair. Or it looks like it anyway, the subtle sheen hidden in light brown locks catching light with every explosion above.

And the decision to do what he’s about to do on a night like this one was maybe one of the easiest Paul’s ever made. Not that his resolve does anything to stop the nerves from mounting a little higher every time the black sky splits apart.

“That one was awesome,” Daryl says. And Paul wishes his mind had been on the sky instead of somewhere else. He vaguely remembers a firework splitting apart like the model of an atom in one of his old high school textbooks.

“It was,” he agrees, his fingers closing around the future, drawing it out of his jeans pocket enclosed in his fist. It seems so small for something so immense.

There was a time he’d thought he’d never do this with another person. There was a time he couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to.

Those times are gone, and all that remains is Daryl and as many years of fireworks as they can possibly watch. He turns toward him, watching the way they dance in the mirrors of his eyes.

“I love you,” Paul says quietly, and it’s not the first time he’s said it and it most certainly will not be the last. Daryl turns away from the sky in an instant, giving him a smile so easy that Paul can almost forget how hard he'd fought for it once.

“Love you too.”

Paul does it then, finding Daryl’s hand and slipping it into his palm. Daryl brings the object close to his eyes, waiting for the night sky to light up again so he can see the tiny pewter band, turned maroon by the sparks above. 

“Marry me,” Paul says, not a demand but a plea. There’s more he could say. Things like,  _I don’t want to live without you._ Things like,  _I couldn’t bare it if I had to._ Things like, _y_ _ou are the axis of my existence, and I can’t remember how my world ever turned before you were in it._

But Daryl already knows all of those things. He’s only heard them hundreds of times, phrased every way that Paul has words for. 

Daryl studies the band longer, the color of it shifting with every boom.

“Okay,” he says, not a resignation but an agreement. An agreement to the two words that Paul has said and the hundreds more quietly floating through the air between them, permeating it just as much as the smell of gunpowder. "I will." 

Paul smiles, and they kiss under a sky on fire.

**Author's Note:**

> Send me random emoji at DarylDixonGrimes on tumblr.


End file.
